Top-ticketing speed cameras not where most kids have been hit, Tribune finds

Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune

A speed camera tracks vehicles Sept. 9, 2015, on East Morgan Drive as they pass through Washington Park in Chicago. It is the No. 2 highest-ranking camera for tickets, issuing more than 84,000 citations worth more than $3.5 million in fines.

A speed camera tracks vehicles Sept. 9, 2015, on East Morgan Drive as they pass through Washington Park in Chicago. It is the No. 2 highest-ranking camera for tickets, issuing more than 84,000 citations worth more than $3.5 million in fines. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

15 top-ticketing speed cameras on roads where no kids have been hit by speeders for over decade, Tribune finds

The 15 speed cameras generating the most fines in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "Children's Safety Zone" program are located along well-traveled stretches of major Chicago roads where records show no children have been hit by speeders for more than a decade.

A Tribune examination of crash data since 2004 shows many children have been injured by vehicles throughout Chicago — more than 11,000 — but speeding is rarely cited as a cause, according to Chicago Police Department reports.

Those accidents typically happen on smaller streets, such as in the city's neighborhoods where balls are kicked into streets, where parents are backing from driveways and where there are no speed cameras standing watch.

The analysis raises new questions about the motivations behind the 2-year-old speed camera program, which was sold to the public, state lawmakers and the City Council as a measure to protect children walking near parks and schools. Critics have long suggested the measure was more about generating revenue for a cash-strapped city.

In a six-month investigation, the Tribune found that City Hall has ignored its own rules for the cameras, issuing millions of dollars in bogus or questionable citations at times when cameras should be off, when warning signs were lacking and when schoolchildren were not at risk as required under state law. The examination of more than 2 million tickets also bolsters concerns — raised when Emanuel first pitched the program — about the extent of the problem he aimed to address.

"Nobody is cavalier about children being hit by cars, but there are relatively very few of those accidents, and even fewer where speeding is the reason," said Paul Jovanis, a Pennsylvania State University traffic expert who questioned how the city chose the camera locations. "It appears to me the mechanism they used to pick these sites is obviously wanting, and where they are placing these cameras has no relationship to where kids are being hit by speeding cars.

"If you are truly interested in protecting children, this is not the way to go about doing it."

The city's top transportation official said that regardless of whether children are injured by speeders on any particular stretch of road, the cameras are already changing driver behavior by slowing them down in what her office has identified as areas of highest risk to children.

"We are not going to wait for a child to die to put a camera up," said Rebekah Scheinfeld, who oversees the program as commissioner of Chicago's Transportation Department. "Speeding is illegal, and it's illegal because it causes serious injury and fatality in crashes. There's a reason we have speed limits. There's a reason we have laws, and it's not OK to speed — anywhere."

She said the city relies on an in-depth safety analysis when deciding where to locate its cameras. It includes speed studies, census data and an examination of police data on all types of crashes whether they involve speeding — from fender benders at the intersections down the block to major pileups on the entrance ramps of nearby expressways.

"Potential revenue is not a factor in our ranking," Scheinfeld said during a recent interview with the Tribune. "It's not a factor in our camera siting process.

"When we started this program, there was a lot in the media that said this is going to be making, you know, huge (revenues)," she said. "I am not the one that's in charge of the dollars on it, but I know enough in terms of the magnitude of it, it's not where all the doomsday people were."

Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune

Cyclists ride down the John “Beans” Beniac Greenway Park bike path Sept. 2, 2015, on Chicago’s Southeast Side. A speed camera at 10318 S. Indianapolis Ave. is near the alleyway entrance to the trail. Records show no child has been hit by a car along that stretch of Indianapolis since 2004 but six children have been hit along smaller, residential streets farther into the greenway.

Cyclists ride down the John “Beans” Beniac Greenway Park bike path Sept. 2, 2015, on Chicago’s Southeast Side. A speed camera at 10318 S. Indianapolis Ave. is near the alleyway entrance to the trail. Records show no child has been hit by a car along that stretch of Indianapolis since 2004 but six children have been hit along smaller, residential streets farther into the greenway. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

A review of the more than 2 million tickets issued since October 2013 shows the city has issued more than $81 million in fines at the 146 cameras in operation at 61 safety zones through Sept. 1. More than a third of those fines — $34 million — came from the 15 top-earning cameras.

Consider the city's most prolific camera, at 445 W. 127th St. in the West Pullman neighborhood on the Far South Side. Since the camera went live in the first days of the program, it has generated nearly 100,000 tickets and nearly $4 million in fines. It was erected to protect children at the intersection of the four-lane highway and the Major Taylor Bike Trail.

Police reports going back to 2004 show one child on a bicycle was hit and injured where the bike path meets 127th, the area protected by the camera. No cause was listed on the report.

There were 29 children on foot or bike injured by cars within a block of the 6-mile bike path, most on smaller, residential streets far from the camera but still in the safety zone as defined by the city. Speed was listed as a factor in only one of the accidents near the bike path, more than a mile north of the camera.

The third-highest-ranking camera for fines protects a Southeast Side bike path near the Indiana state line. The camera is at 10318 S. Indianapolis Ave., a six-lane thoroughfare. It is near the alleyway entrance to the John "Beans" Beniac Greenway, a path that continues for blocks behind residential garages.

Records show no child has been hit by a car along that stretch of Indianapolis since 2004 but that six children have been hit along smaller, residential streets farther into the greenway. Speeding was not listed as a factor in any of the crashes. The camera has issued 78,000 tickets and generated nearly $3.2 million in fines.

The second-highest-earning camera is in the middle of the 367-acre Washington Park, where it has generated more than 84,000 citations worth more than $3.5 million in fines.

There have been 50 accidents where children were hit in the park safety zone in the past decade, but almost all of those were outside the park itself — typically on streets bordering the park. The camera is at 536 E. Morgan Drive, a four-lane road that bisects the park. None of the five children hit by cars in the park since 2004 was on that major thoroughfare, though several were hit on connecting roads. Speeding was not listed as a factor in the park accidents.

Another camera is on the outskirts of the park at 5330 S. Cottage Grove Ave., near where one child was injured by a speeding car in 2007.

But the absence of such accidents near camera locations is a scenario that repeats itself over and over again throughout the program.

"It looks to me like another solution looking for a problem," said Joseph Hummer, a traffic safety expert at Wayne State University in Michigan. "It's an example of what you should not do with such an intrusive countermeasure."

Supporters of automated traffic enforcement suggest it doesn't matter that few children are being hit by speeding cars at some camera locations. They say what matters more is that the speed cameras are slowing drivers down, and that makes streets safer for everyone — including children.

"The fact is more people are less likely to speed because of these types of population-wide deterrents," said Libby Thomas, a traffic safety researcher at the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center. "And we know that lower speeds are directly related to safer streets. I don't know where people got this idea it is unfair to enforce a speed limit at any time or at any place.

"Politicians often rely on emotional appeals to get laws approved," Thomas said, "but it is important to take a step back and look at the whole picture."

Since his first days in office, Emanuel has pushed to expand the city's embattled red light camera program to include speed cameras. Both he and Scheinfeld have used inaccurate crash statistics to exaggerate the safety benefits of cameras in support of the controversial measures. Within months after he took office in 2011, state lawmakers agreed to allow cameras within one-eighth of a mile of the 1,500 parks and schools throughout Chicago.

But amid a series of Tribune reports that exposed corruption, the overblown safety claims, failed oversight and unfair enforcement in the city's decade-old red light camera program, Emanuel decided to downsize the program by limiting it to a maximum of 300 "Children's Safety Zones" near the parks and schools where the city says kids face the greatest risk.

Posted on the city's website is a spreadsheet Scheinfeld says was used by her office to rank each park and school zone based on crash statistics. The analysis used crash data from 2009 through 2012 and included all types of crashes — pedestrians, fender benders and speed-related crashes, as well as crashes that had nothing to do with speed.

Scheinfeld said the city weighted speed-related crashes more heavily than others in the rankings. In addition to speeding, the city considered all "speed-related" crashes in which police listed the cause as "failing to reduce speed to avoid a crash," "exceeding safe speed for conditions" and reckless driving.

Experts interviewed said those categories include many accidents that often don't involve speeding.

The Tribune, however, decided to zero in on the problem Emanuel told lawmakers and City Council members he was trying to address: children hit by speeders near parks and schools.

In the 11-year period from Jan. 1, 2004, through Dec. 31, 2014, crash reports show 11,514 children on foot or bike were hit by motor vehicles in Chicago, including 108 in which police listed "exceeding the authorized speed limit" as a contributing cause. Using the city's broader definition of speed-related crashes, the number of child pedestrians hit by cars since 2004 was 1,090. For this report, children on foot or bike were considered pedestrians.

Looking only at the 61 parks and school zones that were equipped with cameras, 923 children were hit by cars, including 13 in which speeding was listed by police as a cause, and 85 under the city's definition of speeding.

One of those accidents was fatal.

Six-year-old Breeanna Lord was in her neighborhood around 6 p.m. May 10, 2005, when a 25-year-old drunken driver with no valid license careened down the street and struck her and her 5-year-old sister while they crossed West Pryor Avenue several blocks away from Morgan Park High School — one of the 28 schools in Chicago now protected by speed cameras.

The driver was charged with reckless homicide, reckless driving, aggravated driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident. Breeanna died of multiple injuries, and her sister Leeanna suffered a broken leg, according to news reports at the time.

City officials said the absence of accidents involving children walking near the major roads where cameras are located does not mean there is no risk.

"We have focused cameras within zones where we believe there is great risk for speed-related crashes, especially those affecting youth," Scheinfeld said, adding that she believes drivers even in the interior neighborhoods away from the cameras are driving slower because of a "spillover effect."

"There's also the practical feasibility of where you are putting cameras," she said. "We are trying not to put cameras right in front of people's living rooms — flashing in their living rooms, for example, so you have different types of siting criteria that you are balancing."

She insisted the program's earning potential for a city in fiscal crisis is not part of that balancing.

"This is not motivated by revenue," she said.

The city this month issued a news release crediting the cameras with reducing crash rates in 21 of the safety zones that have had cameras since 2013. The city reported an 18 percent reduction in all injury crashes between 2012 and 2014, during a less-dramatic reduction in such crashes citywide.

Yet in 2014, speed-related injury crashes in all safety zones were higher than they've been since 2004, according to the Chicago police crash reports.

Experts interviewed cautioned against relying too heavily on police reports to assess whether crashes truly involve speed, even though they acknowledge there is no other measure available. They say police showing up after the fact are often unable to determine the cause.

Crash data show that in roughly half of all the pedestrian accidents in the city, police were either unable or unwilling to list any contributing cause.

Thomas, the speed expert from UNC, said she supports the appropriate use of speed camera technology to address safety concerns.

"Speed cameras can be political, but camera programs administered correctly — without the kind of corruption and mismanagement you found in the red light camera program — can be more objective than a human being stopping a car," she said.

Thomas agreed with Scheinfeld that the absence of accidents where cars are violating speed limits does not necessarily mean a speed camera is inappropriate.

"You have to consider the circumstances and the issues you are trying to address," she said. "Chicago is a very dense urban environment, and cars are not the only ones using it. Perhaps the reason there are no accidents along a particular stretch of road is that people are intimidated because of the speed at which cars are traveling.

"One goal of slowing them down is to address that intimidation."

Hummer, of Wayne State, took a more critical view.

"It seems to me like a very flimsy body of evidence for such an intrusive program that is taking a lot of money out of people's pockets," he said.

"Speed camera programs should be applied gingerly and as a last resort," Hummer said.

"If you've got a speeding problem on a specific stretch of roadway, what did you do first to address it?" he said. "There are literally dozens of effective methods to mitigate for speed, and that kind of a draconian enforcement program should be last on the list."